Political Mechanisms
Bicameralism
Also Known As Two-Chamber Legislature
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
A legislature divided into two separate chambers, each of which must ordinarily agree before a bill becomes law, as opposed to a unicameral legislature's single chamber. The design has two broad historical roots: the class-based division of Britain's Parliament into a House of Lords representing the hereditary and ecclesiastical nobility and a House of Commons representing commoners, a structure that took its modern two-chamber form by the 14th century, and the federal logic exemplified by the United States Congress, where the Constitutional Convention's Great Compromise of 1787 paired a House of Representatives apportioned by population with a Senate giving every state equal representation regardless of size, deliberately balancing popular and federal principles against each other. Many bicameral systems combine both logics, with an upper chamber that gives extra weight to constituent states or regions, as in Germany's Bundesrat or Australia's Senate, or that provides a check through longer terms, different electoral timing or a distinct basis of representation. Bicameralism remains the more common arrangement worldwide and is treated as a natural companion to federal systems for the same reason the American case illustrates, a second chamber gives constituent units a voice.
Facts
Origin Year1341 marks the point at which the English Parliament's knights and burgesses began meeting and deliberating apart from the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, the earliest clear evidence of the Commons sitting separately and the date generally cited for when Parliament took its modern two-chamber form. The chamber later named the House of Lords was not called that until 1544 and the House of Commons only gradually acquired its own distinct procedures afterward, but the division into two bodies, the structural fact that defines bicameralism, dates to this 1341 separation rather than to either later naming or to Parliament's much older unicameral origins. Founding ContextDividing a legislature into two chambers commonly reflects a compromise between competing principles of representation, one chamber apportioned by population and the other by a different basis such as territory, or a wish to check hasty legislation by requiring a second, differently constituted body to agree to it. The English Parliament's own division into Commons and Lords, and the United States Congress's split between a population based House and a state based Senate, both trace this reasoning. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Reconciliation between chambers, a distinct stage of the process, applies only where the legislature is bicameral.
This source names United States directly: "the federal logic exemplified by the United States Congress, where the Constitutional Convention's Great Compromise of 1787 paired a House of Representatives apportioned by population with a Senate..."
Influenced
The Constitutional Convention's Great Compromise split Congress into a House apportioned by population and a Senate of equal state representation.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.